Cinque Terre, Italy: Honeymoon Part III

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We began our honeymoon in Positano and then we were off to Sorrento.  Day 6 was spent on the train heading north to Cinque Terre.  The trip was long and I read an entire book on the train ride there!  The trip wasn’t over when we arrive at the Monterosso train station.  We then had to shlep our luggage up a hill to the hotel.  Then it was official … we had arrived in Cinque Terre!

Cinque Terre, Italy: Honeymoon Part | Life's Tidbits

Screen shot from Google Maps

We stayed at the #1 hotel in Monterosso, at least according to TripAdvisor, Hotel Villa Steno.  The hotel was great and the view was amazing.  We made good use of our balcony during our stay. I would definitely recommend a balcony with an ocean view!

Day 7: Day at the Beach

After sleeping in a little, we lathered up with sun tan lotion and headed to the beach!  The day was spent ocean side reading, tanning and hanging out.  The beach was beautiful and while relaxing on the beach I read Sarah’s Key, which is a great book and I highly recommend it.

Cinque Terre, Italy: Honeymoon Part | Life's Tidbits

After a drink on the balcony and taking in the beautiful views we decided it was time for some PIZZA! Nothing had compared to the first place we found in Positano, however we were going to try to find something at least close.  As always we used the TripAdvisor app on the iPhone and decided upon Pizzeria Da Ely.  The pizza was very good and we were able to land a seat outside without having a reservation. :)  After a lovely dinner and bottle of wine we headed back to the hotel.

Cinque Terre, Italy: Honeymoon Part | Life's Tidbits

Monterosso al Mare shuts down a lot earlier than Sorrento and Positano did.  For us this was a good thing, because the next day we planned to hike the 5 cities of Cinque Terre!

Day 8: Hiking Cinque Terre

We woke up early, which was a nice change and headed directly to breakfast.  After breakfast we packed water bottles, sunscreen and the camera into our backpack and headed towards the trail for our big hike.  We hiked from Monterosso to Vernazza.  I honestly don’t think I’ve ever sweat so much in my entire life.  It was SO hot and although the hike wasn’t hard there were enough stairs to make it so I couldn’t control the sweating. Hahaha.  Sexy, right?

Anyways after finally reaching Vernazza we stopped for lunch at Gianni Franzi.  I had the pasta with meat sauce it was A-Mazing.  After resting for a while we began the hike to Corniglia.  Once we arrived in  Corniglia it was time for a drink at a cute little bar.  The path from Corniglia to Manarola was closed for some reason so we would have to hop on the train to Manarola and then we could finish the hike through the cities.

The path closure was about all the level of excuses we needed to skip the last two cities (Manarola and Riomaggiore).  It was hot and we were tired from already hiking for the better part of the day.  We got on the train and headed back to our beautiful hotel.  We sat on the balcony, watched the sunset and savored our last evening in Cinque Terre.

Here are a few pictures from the hike:

Cinque Terre, Italy: Honeymoon Part | Life's Tidbits

So beautiful!!! Even though we didn’t finish the hike I am glad we enjoyed the portion that we did do.  I think if it wasn’t so hot then we would have done the whole thing.  On our last night we went to Il Casello for dinner.  The food was great and the view of the ocean was perfect.  I think this is a place that only takes cash though … just a little fyi/heads up if you decide to go.

Day 9 would be spent on the train to Rome – our final stop on the honeymoon.

Caio! See you in Rome!!!

Happy traveling.

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Sorrento, Italy: Honeymoon Part II

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After spending three days in Positano, Italy we had a driver pick us up and take us to our next destination … Sorrento!

Google Map of Sorrento, Italy | Life's Tidbits

The plan was to stay here the shortest amount of time and therefore find the cheapest place we could.  We ended up staying at a cute little B&B on the main strip.  We had decided to do a lot of sightseeing while in Sorrento so we were less concerned with staying at someplace “fancy”.  Besides sleeping at night we weren’t really in the room so it worked out perfectly.  This B&B was in walking distance of the port, train and a ton of restaurants.

Day 4:

We arrived at the B&B, checked in, and went ahead and changed.  We walked around town a little and headed down to the port to catch the ferry from Sorrento to Capri.

Honeymooning in Sorrento, Italy - ferry from Sorrento to Capri | Life's Tidbits

Once we arrived in Capri we had a horrible lunch (pizza & beer) at a “restaurant” near where the ferry dropped us off.  Due to poor planning and arriving at siesta time we missed seeing the Garrato and ended up taking a bus to Anacapri city.  The city was unfortunately pretty much shut down.  We walked around for a while and then took the bus back down to the port. If you plan to explore Capri make it there early in the day.  Our poor planning lead to a less than amazing day.  Dinner however made up for our so-so day! After looking through TripAdvisor reviews for a long while my husband found Ristorante Bar Parco Ibsen.  This place seemed a little weird as we walked down the path, but it was so romantic and the food was A-MAZING!

Honeymooning in Sorrento, Italy - Ristorante Bar Parco Ibsen | Life's Tidbits

After a fantastic dinner we randomly walked past someone handing out  brochures  to see some new ruins.  Although it was still “under construction” it was a fun way to spend 30 minutes.  A little impromptu sightseeing!

Honeymooning in Sorrento, Italy | Life's Tidbits

Despite our plan to head directly to bed, so we could wake up early for the trip to Pompeii, we ended up at a little wine bar just down the street from the B&B.  It was crazy – the whole main strip had been closed to traffic and people were mulling about. It was so much fun to people watch and have a glass of wine.

Day 5:

It’s our one week anniversary!! We totally overslept, but managed to rally and get to the train station. After a fairly quick train ride we arrived at Pompeii.  My husband is super into the whole historical thing so we rented audio guides and headed off to see the ruins.  One thing to note is we forgot to pick up a map! Seriously navigating around without a map proved to be difficult, but neither of us realized our mistake until it was too late.  Thank goodness we have the Rick Steve’s book with us, which included a mini map of Pompeii.  We spent the day wondering around Pompeii (and sweating a lot … Italy in August is HOT!).  The husband was definitively way more into the whole experience than me, but overall it was a great day.

Things to do in Sorrento, Italy: View Pompeii for a day. Honeymooning in Italy | Life's Tidbits

Clearly since it was our one week anniversary we figured we should splurge on dinner.  So we chose L’Antica Trattoria restaurant for dinner and ate a 7 course meal.  It was WAY too much food, but it was also fantastic so C’est la vie.  My favorite course was the pasta and shrimp with a lemon sauce served in a lemon!

Honeymoon: L’Antica Trattoria restaurant in Sorrento, Italy | Life's Tidbits

Honeymoon: L’Antica Trattoria restaurant in Sorrento, Italy | Life's Tidbits

After dinner we rolled back to the B&B and hoped into bed.  It was a long fun day, but we needed to rest up for tomorrow when we would be boarding the train for a long ride to our next destination.  I think one more day in Sorrento would have been nice. That way we could have explore Sorrento itself a little more.  This is someplace I would definitely like to return to one day.

Caio! See you in Cinque Terre!

Happy vacationing.

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DIY Rehearsal Dinner Invitations

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I know I am a bad blogger and I still haven’t told you about how we made our own wedding invitations, but that DIY project was a HUGE undertaking. Honestly, I’m not completely sure how to walk you through the process step by step … YET.  So instead I started thinking maybe I would just begin by sharing our DIY rehearsal dinner invitations.

After determining the location, invite list and all that fun stuff for the rehearsal dinner I decided we (the husband and I) should DIY own rehearsal dinner invites.  We had left over card stock from the wedding invite inserts as well as extra envelopes (from our DIY Calligraphy).  I mean it would have been such a waste not to take advantage of the left over paper materials, right?!?!?! ;)

Early on I found Wedding Paper Divas. They have fabulous invitations for various occasions, in fact it is the website we purchased our save the dates from.  I quickly found this rehearsal invitation, which served as my inspiration for our DIY invites.

Image Credit: Wedding Paper Divas

What you need:

Photoshop has a 30 day FREE trail you can download.  We used a 30 day trial to create the initial draft of our wedding invitations. In the end we ended up purchasing Photoshop.  We planned to use it not only for wedding stuff, but also for my budding photography hobby!  If you plan to go the 30 day trial route, make sure to save the final version of your invitation as a PSD, JPG and TIFF file. This will ensure you are able to print the design even after your trail expires.

To ensure we could use some of our left over envelopes, I knew the invitations would need to be 5×7.  Once I had the size I found a free image online of a chandelier and downloaded it. From there I Googled rehearsal dinner text and placed it on the initial version of the invite.  After that it was just a matter of finding a layout we liked as well as fonts.

The majority of the text is in a renaissance font, which is free to download!  Then for our names I used the same font we used on our invitations for our names, again a free font you can download.  I felt using a little of the same font as the wedding invitations tied everything together.

I didn’t take a lot of pictures of the process, which is a bummer, so I can only really describe what I did.  I printed two invites on each piece of card stock and then used my handy dandy paper cutter to make them 5×7. I printed a number of test versions on plain paper before using the card stock.

This is one of the test versions, please excuse the crappy blackberry camera shot:

I had printed almost all of the rehearsal dinner invites when I remembered I had purchased a paper rounder punch. I decided to go ahead and use one of my test invites and round the corners to see how it looked.  I ended up loving it and the husband was in agreement.  A bunch of punches later we had rounded edges instead of sharp corners.

Here’s what the rehearsal dinner invitation looked like totally finished:

Here are a couple of extra tips:

  1. SPELL CHECK!
  2. Print test versions on plain white paper before doing a sample on your nice card stock.
  3. Print using High resolution.
  4. Make sure you have enough paper.  You will need extra for test prints as well as if you detect a mistake. Or if like me your ink cartridge starts to die so some invites are better than others.
  5. Start early.  Even though you don’t have to print as many rehearsal dinner invitations as wedding invites (usually) they still take time.  Better not to be up against a deadline.

Happy Planning!

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Recipe: Spicy Meatballs

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So remember when I made the tortilla soup?  I mentioned how I loved that recipe as well as the meatball recipe from the 4 Hour Body diet.  I’ve never been a big sausage person, however for some reason I LOVE it in this meatball recipe. If you wanted to make this slightly more healthy you could substitute in ground turkey and turkey sausage.

I’ve made this recipe a number of time with a couple different variations.  The latest version include a whole bag of spinach. I think it makes the meatballs look more appetizing as well as putting your vegetable serving right into the meatball!  I wish I could take credit for this idea, but it was my friend’s idea.

Ingredients:

1 lb ground beef
1 lb spicy (or sweet) Italian sausage
1 tsp garlic powder
2 tbsp Italian seasoning
½ small yellow onion, roughly chopped
½ cup almond meal (or bread crumbs or wheat germ)
2 eggs, whisked
1 tsp red pepper flakes
Black pepper and salt to taste
1 package chopped spinach (cooked)

Cook the frozen chopped spinach per the directions on the bag.  Meanwhile combine all the other ingredients in a glass bowl and mix together.  Don’t forget to remove the Italian sausage from its casing.

Once the spinach is done cooking allow it to cook and then squeeze as much of the water as possible out of the spinach.  You don’t want soggy meatballs!  Mix in the spinach.  It’s best to do it with your hands (gross I know!).

Create ~24 medium size meatballs.

Recipe Spicy Meatballs, 4 Hour Body / Slow Carb Diet | Life's Tidbits

Pre-heat your grill pan (these can also be cooked in the oven if you prefer).  Once hot, add the meatballs. Fry 5–7 minutes, until bottom is browned.

Recipe Spicy Meatballs, 4 Hour Body / Slow Carb Diet | Life's Tidbits

Turn meatballs to opposite side and cook for another 5–7 minutes. It will take several batches to cook all 24 meatballs.

If on the 4 hour body diet serve it with lentils or black beans.  If not, then your pantry is your oyster.  These will taste great with almost any side!

Recipe Spicy Meatballs, 4 Hour Body / Slow Carb Diet | Life's Tidbits

About three meatballs is a serving. And boy does this meal make a fabulous lunch.

Happy cooking!

Don’t forget to leave your tidbit by commenting below :)

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Positano, Italy: Honeymoon Part I

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Our two week honeymoon began in Positano, Italy.  It is towards the southern end of Italy and has some fantastic views of the Amalfi Coast!  Positano also has beaches which was a must have for the first stop on our honeymoon.

Screen Shot of GoogleMaps

We decided to splurge a little in Positano. It was our time to relax, soak in being married and decompress after all that wedding planning.  We spent an evening researching hotels in Positano using TripAdvisor and Rick Steve’s guide.  When we finally stumbled upon Hotel Marincanto; I was immediately sold.  The pictures showed phenomenal views and was within walking distance of the beach!

After a red eye flight from DC to Paris and finally to Naples we arrived excited, but exhausted.  Luckily my husband had hired a driver to take us from Naples to Positano.  The streets are crazy windy and narrow. I was VERY happy to not be driving myself in a foreign country while totally exhausted!!  Hiring a driver was probably one of the best decisions we made.

Day 1:

We arrived in Positano and checked into the hotel.  We were both STARVING so we changed quickly and walked down to the beach.  Unfortunately we arrived at a weird time and had to walk around for a while before finding a place serving food.  We stumbled upon Le Tre Sorelle.  It had the MOST amazing pizza.  The best pizza we had all vacation.  Seriously I dream about this pizza it was so good. We went all three days for lunch.  Ok I think you now get how amazing the pizza was!

Honeymoon in Positano Italy. Favorite restaurants and places to stay | Life's Tidbits

After lunch we walked around and then retired to our hotel for a siesta.  After a much needed nap we watched the sunset on our balcony.  Such an amazing view!

Honeymoon vacation Positano, Italy | Life's Tidbits

For dinner we went to Ristorante La Cambusa.  It was okay, but nothing to write home about.  For our first night it was fine, but I’m assuming there are other better options for your first evening in Italy!  My husband had been instructed that when you pass a gelato place you stop … always.  So as we strolled (or really rolled) back towards the hotel we stopped for our first taste of gelato.

OMG the lemon gelato was to die for and totally worth feeling extra stuffed.  :)  Off to bed we went excited to spend the entire next day at the pool or beach!

Day 2:

Reading, sun tanning and have a beer by the pool took up the whole day!  We couldn’t have asked for more perfect weather.  We chose to stay by the pool instead of going to the beach where we would have to rent mattalas.  Considering the beach was rocky there wasn’t any real need to be there when we had a gorgeous pool at our disposal, plus the view is so perfect from the suntanning patio.

Honeymoon vacation Positano, Italy | Life's Tidbits

We made the trip down to the beach for lunch at Le Tre Sorelle.  When it was time to make some decisions about dinner out came the iPhone and directly to Trip Advisor app we went.  Buca di Bacco had some good reviews and we remembered walking past it the night before.  Boy did it not disappoint.  The mozzarella melted in our mouths and the gnocchi was the best we’ve ever had.  If I remember correctly it was called Sorrento gnocchi.  Either way have it if you ever go it was to die for.

Sorrento Gnocchi and tomato salad in Positano, Italy - Traveling, honeymooning, vacation | Life's Tidbits

The night ended with a “gelato cap” and was the perfect end to our second day.

Day 3:

The day was very much like day 2.  Time at the pool and then off to our favorite (and only) lunch place in Positano.  We were sad our time in Positano was coming to an end.

Our last dinner was at Ristorante Covo Dei Saraceni.  It was an amazing choice for our last night with top notch seafood and pasta!

Food and wine in Positano, Italy - vacation, honeymoon, traveling | Life's Tidbits

We made friends with a couple who was also honeymooning at the table next to us. It turned out that the woman works in my hometown as a school teacher.  What a small small world we live in!  After dinner we hit up a new gelato place and ended up getting the lemon gelato for the third day in a row. Some how it just didn’t get old.

Ciao and see you in Sorrento!

Happy vacationing!!

Signiture_Nicole

 

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